How to find consulting clients? This question is the first thing you should ask before you start a consulting business. As we all know, the consultation service is the hottest trend today. It has promising growth and many opportunities as people need it more and more in the future. However, without clients, you can’t run your business or even make a profit from it. For that reason, we made this article to help you learn more about your clients and how to find them.
What are Consulting Clients?
First of all, you have to understand the consulting clients meaning. They are the people that seek your advice in the field that you master. Unlike the customer of other products, you will have continuous responsibility to your clients. Meaning, when they come to your place, it means they trust you for help to reach their goal. And, you should provide that help until they reach the goal.
However, it doesn’t mean you have to follow them forever. The consultation service mostly only provides its service for a certain time length or period. Once that contract is over, you can release your obligation to that client. In some cases, you may still have the responsibility to those clients. But, mostly, it is all about them being your old clients when they use your service once more in the future. Therefore, it is necessary to provide the best service to get a good impression as well as loyal clients.
Finding the Clients in LinkedIn
To find clients, you can use various platforms. One of them is LinkedIn. Why? This platform is the place where high-profile people gather. Many of them are decision-makers in their company. It is possible to find clients that give you a big project. How to get consulting clients on Linkedin? Below, we have simple steps to maximize your reach to your potential clients.
- Create an interesting and detailed profile summary. Write an appealing story that can attract people to search more about your service,
- Create a connection with other professionals or companies. It helps you to get referrals as well as a source you can recommend to your clients,
- Build the connection with the potential clients you can find on LinkedIn. Prioritize on those that are interested in your service,
- Keep your communication with those potential clients once they show interest. It will increase the probability to convert them into your consulting clients,
- Once you get them, you only have to provide the best service that they need.
Using Other Platforms
LinkedIn is indeed an effective tool to get you a client for your consulting service. However, you can’t depend solely on this platform. To improve your business growth speed as well as quality, you also should learn about how to find consulting clients on other platforms. There are many of them. However, the methods to find the clients are generally the same, such as:
Identify the Client
Try to understand which client that you want to get. You can find many qualities and attributes of the clients that you want. Based on that, you will know whether you need an individual or group, the client’s finance power, location, and many more.
Find Out Your Selling Point
You don’t have any name or achievement in this industry. It is only the beginning of your business journey. Therefore, you should make yourself different from others. Find your selling point that can attract more people to try your service. Once you find one, you can use the first point to filter which clients you can accept. That is the basics of how do small consulting firms find clients.
Attract with Content
The people want to see what they can get from you. Therefore, you should give them something that shows your expertise. Try to make content, like a video or article, about the problem that your client may have. Then, provide the best solution for that by using your knowledge and skill. A powerful and satisfying solution will become a strong magnet to attract more people to come and use your service.
You can build a website as a place to show your content. Or, you also can use video streaming services, like YouTube, for video-type content. Nowadays, you can find many platforms to do that. Most of them are free. However, we recommend you to pay some to get better performance and quality. That also helps your customer to understand your content easier.
Referrals
You also can ask for referrals from your clients. This method works wonderfully after you get clients and can provide the most satisfying result from them. By asking for referrals from your satisfied clients, you have a higher chance to get other clients. After all, the promotion that came from the experienced clients will become proof of how good your service is. This method is also the easiest way of how to get consultancy projects in the future.
Advertise Your Consultation Service
It is a business. Therefore, you can treat it like running a business. Marketing is necessary to get more clients and spread your name. Thus, you need an advertisement for that. You can use various types of advertisements here. Free marketing through social media is one of them. It is easy and fast.
However, for the best result, try to invest in the paid advertisement. Hiring a professional to advertise your service will help you to get a much better result, faster. Moreover, they also help you to build and strengthen your branding. That gives you a strong position in the competition with other similar services.
Conclusion
Finding one or more clients for consulting business is practically the same as other businesses. However, you will provide a service that can change their life and career. Therefore, make sure you only try all methods above to get the clients that you can handle. That is all that you should know about how to find consulting clients.